Many medical practitioners and philosophers in the past, such as Dr. Max Bircher Benner and Pythagoras, demonstrated the connection between optimal health and the food/drink we consume. They understood how food plays an essential role in health, as both the cause of disease and the medicine used to heal it.
Supporting the body’s self-healing ability requires patience, time, discipline and knowledge. There is definitely a right and a wrong way of modifying one’s eating habits, or transitioning to the kind of diet that we would like to have, no matter how healthy that diet may appear.
Introducing clean food into our normal diet or starting an extreme regime when our inner physical environment is out of balance, can trigger a major cleansing response - often with unpleasant results. While this kind of reaction is normal, people who experience it can often give up thinking the diet or therapy was unsuccessful. But this may not be the case.
A soft and gradual nutritional therapy approach is often far more effective and kinder to the body. It can take months or even years for the internal condition (e.g. waste in our tissues, organs, bones, cells, etc.) that contributes to our state of health, to be altered and changed. Each set of circumstances, approach, response and outcome is highly individual.
The first steps in nutritional therapy are to carefully consider:
- Our digestive power and fire
- The current state of our gut health
- Our constitution (inherited and acquired)
- How long our state of health and wellbeing have existed?
- Where the congestion/pain/deficiency/excess is focused?
- What have we done to change this state?
- Which foods, drinks, herbs, medication, drugs, etc., we consume (or don’t consume) that lie at the root?
- Where and how our food is grown (a lot of countries have soil mineral deficiencies)
- Our eating habits and times (quiet period)
- How weak and serious our condition is?
A realistic, natural and delicious menu can be determined based on the above evaluation, so that the transition to a wholefood diet (e.g. 100% plant based or variation), can be a successful and positive one.
Please read more about nutritional therapy in these essays:
Would you like to transition to a wholefood or raw food diet? What should you take into consideration?
Transition to a wholefood or raw food diet can take a minimum of 28 days and for best results at least 100 days. The speed will greatly depend on where you live, your current state of health, your digestive power, and how easily you can access fresh, locally grown organic produce.
My approach to nutrition doesn’t focus on a strictly molecular level or take a reductionist view of medicine. I look at the big picture and at your specific case.
One of the most under appreciated and overlooked methods is listening to your own body and its reactions. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to nutrition. Each body and set of circumstances are unique.
Posted by Jasmin on Jan 03, 2026